


An Exercise in Dissonance

by oh_simone



Series: tales from the golden age of livejournal [3]
Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 02:34:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5989119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a piano in Namimori High School, and someone is playing it when they shouldn't be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Exercise in Dissonance

Namimori High should have been quiet.  
  
Sunday, three in the afternoon, and the sky gray, heavy with the promise of rain. The bell toll lonely on the hour, trees bare of leaves.  
  
Namimori should have been silent as the grave.  
  
From somewhere within its walls, the first notes of a piano concerto strike in sharp, crisp clarity.  
  
  
  
Hibari opens his eyes and tracks the flight of Hibird as the small creature approaches, bobbing along the brisk chilly wind. When he stands, the bird perches on his shoulder, nuzzles his chin affectionately, and launches into cheery accompaniment of the faint music from below. His tonfas rest heavy and smooth against his palms, but he never seriously considers using them. There’s only one herbivore thick enough to trespass school grounds on a weekend and provoke Hibari with something as insipid as music; he wouldn’t _need_ the tonfas to take care of this.  
  
Three-hundred and sixty-four steps. One pivot. The door to the music room is ajar, and the notes are thrumming everywhere—floor, ceiling, walls.  
  
The piano is a proper grand, black and shining dully under the overcast light. Hibari slips into the room, but the Storm Guardian is intent on the music. His hands glide rhythmically over the keys in calculated sweeps, and eyes half-shut. The notes spin and tangle from the instrument, rising and falling with each push of thin fingers. Gokudera is lost in his playing, gentle where he never is, tender, solemn, passionate with a strange dignity. Melody and harmony and everything in between; soft now, whirling away fiercely within moments. Chords climbing higher, down, crescendo, glissando. He makes it look easy and graceful and beautiful, and there is a reason no one ever sees him play.  
  
Hibari doesn’t count, because he does not see any of this beauty. Noise, pitched pleasantly, is noise all the same. Within moments of entering, Hibari slams one end of his tonfa onto the board, keys away from Gokudera’s finger. It still isn’t silent—the air is ringing from the incomplete cadenza and its jarring interruption.  
  
“You have no business here,” Hibari says quietly, because that’s all that is needed, but Gokudera looks up, almost confused, and the guardian’s eyes are foolish and cloudy with music. Hibari idly debates smashing his face in. Blood spatter; _that_ is true poetry, he thinks. Bright, vivid. Longer lasting than sound. The crunch of breaking bone; real and satisfying.  
  
“I…” Gokudera says, then seems to abruptly shake mentally, and his eyes clear, coming in sharp green with focus. “Hibari,” he spits, as irritating and noisy as his music. “Of course you and your creepy inappropriate school hard-on would be here. Look, I’m not vandalizing this dump, and also, I’m leaving.” He unfolds from the piano bench, gangly and thin. Puberty is stretching the right-hand man out like an ungraceful rubber band; Hibari himself is growing taller and sharp-featured, but there is nothing awkward about his growth; he knows that as well as the Storm Guardian does.  
  
Almost lazily, he shoves Gokudera stumbling back onto the bench with his tonfa, absently digging the end into the dip between Gokudera’s shoulder and clavicle. One sharp push, as clean and clear as the striking piano keys, and Hibari thinks he could dislocate the arm from inside. He’s almost tempted to try, but the blood would defile school property.  
  
“What were you playing?” Hibari asks absently, cutting through the haze of insults and protests from Gokudera. When his target doesn’t answer, Hibari digs in deeper.  
  
“ _Fuck_ , Grieg! Piano Concerto A Minor. Take that fucking stick off of me, or you’ll lose it down your gut,” Gokudera growls. Hibari retracts the tonfa, ignoring the wary, green eyes searching his blank expression.  
  
“Hm,” says the Cloud Guardian, non-committal. The name doesn’t make a difference; he remembers the rolling notes, the swelling chords, the manic harmonies, the way surfaces vibrated with sound. It is all noise. He tells this to the Storm Guardian, whose eyes widen then narrow in furious affront. There’s the raging again, and Hibari catches ‘uncivilized’, ‘philistine’, and ‘what music do psychotic thugs listen to anyways’ before his patience gives.  
  
Whistling, Hibari’s weapon goes flying in a blur of black and silver. The edge of the tonfa catches Gokudera across the face, just close enough to score a deep cut over his cheekbone.

  
Gokudera shouts in consternation, and clasps a hand to his bleeding face, his thin bravado cracked and betraying terror and agitated anger.  
  
For the first time, Hibari smiles, and it is not pretty, as he well knows. He leans closer, hearing the stuttered, fearful breaths, the dry click of Gokudera’s throat as he swallows.  
  
“Cracking skulls,” Hibari says, low and amused and close enough to kiss. “Blood burbling from a pierced esophagus. Hair ripped from its roots; entrails sliding and spilling from warm, red cavities.” Hibari’s eyes are half-lidded, almost dreamy, his words a lull in the shell of Gokudera’s ear. “A man, in such pain that he cannot utter a sound. That is what I like to hear.”  
  
When he steps back, Gokudera's face is a sickly gray. Hibari can feel his own lips stretch into a thin, mocking smirk.  
  
“You don’t play yours, I won’t play mine.”  
  
  
He leaves the room, and waits until the thin gray-haired boy is stumbling out the main doors of the school before closing his eyes.  
  
Silence.


End file.
